The integrated campaign for Halo 4 in 2012 was a joint effort across multiple agencies, all extending from our umbrella concept, “An Ancient Evil Awakens.” After an absence of several years and a change in game developers, and now under the massive shadow of Call of Duty, the Halo franchise was for the first time since it’s first installment … an underdog. Which was good for us since research told us that gamers didn’t actually like playing as an invincible character, and would rather play against a great threat.

We took a two-pronged approach: simultaneously deepening and redefining franchise hero Master Chief, and providing a frightening glimpse of his new enemy. Across all media we told the story of the Ancient Evil Awakening, shattering sales records in the process.

Our integrated idea took root across all channels. We began at E3 Gaming Expo where rather than showcasing Master Chief, we displayed the power of his new enemy destroying a starship. Kicking off the campaign without the hero created a tremendous response with gamers who naturally wondered, “where’s Chief?” When we did finally show Chief he was compromised, as the new enemy “The Didact” ripped through his memories, examining him and giving fans a deeper understanding of Chief's past.

We replicated this disruptive scan digitally in dozens of homepage takeovers with the Didact's symbol as well as cryptic tease videos. Socially, we disrupted the communications of gamer hotspots like IGN, and on television we disrupted sports with virtual scans and symbols and interrupted program intros. On launch day we created a gigantic red, glowing symbol (the largest ever flown over a city) and flew it over downtown London by helicopter.

Launch day was huge, beating opening sales records for every Halo game ever sold, including Halo 3’s 24-hour franchise sales record. Online, our epic full length 2min game trailer portraying Master Chief helplessly trapped by the Didact monster received over 3m hits during launch week and our stunt in London resulted in a Twitter reach of 32.3m with nearly 20,000 Facebook likes. Despite overwhelming odds, a small media budget, an Election Day launch, and monster competition, we had successfully rebooted the franchise with Halo 4, and opened the door for new games to come.